ABSTRACT

　　In the mid-to-late 1840s, Frederick Engels conducted a profound analysis and fierce criticism of the “true socialist” literature and literary theory represented by Karl Beck and Karl Grün in articles such as “German Socialism in Verse and Prose” and “The True Socialists” from the aspects of character creation, narrative and description techniques, political tendencies, social function, and literary tone. In contrast, Engels highly praised the proletarian socialist literature of Georg Weerth as “the first and most important poet of the German proletariat” in the 1880s. Engels also encouraged the socialist literature of the progressive women writers Minna Kautsky and Margaret Harkness. Reviewing their works, he suggested that the audience was an important factor. When the readers mainly come from the bourgeois circles of society and culture, the more hidden the writer’s views are, the better. However, various conditions such as history, culture, readers, and literary genre affect whether and to what extent political views and tendencies should be hidden in a literary work.

　　KEYWORDS

　　Engels; “true socialist” literature; proletarian socialist literature; tendency of literature

　　From: International Critical Thought 2025 15 (1)

　　Editor: Wang Yi